America's Suitehearts
by brttnytylr
Summary: Puck was inlove with his own sins, even if he knew things wouldn't turn out well. M just to be safe.


None of this is mine.

* * *

It had been 6 months since his baby girl had died. There was nothing the doctors could do apparently. His baby girl's heart had just... _stopped_ and he was pretty sure his stopped along with it. That moment could easily take the cake for the worst moment of his life.

He remembered looking through the big glass window of the nursery, watching her as she slept. Rachel was in her room doing god knows what. He really did not care at that moment as harsh as that sounded. He just wanted to watch his baby girl and never look away ever again.

He remembered watching, fascinated by the small movements of her eyes all the way down to her toes. Everything about her had him captivated. He checked his watch and sighed. He'd been standing at this window for 5 hours straight. His neck was starting to cramp and his back was extremely sore, but he couldn't leave his baby girl. He refused to leave her like his dad left him all those years ago.

He honestly thought the he would stop breathing if he couldn't see her. He looked back through the window and felt like he had died inside a little at the sight. His breath was caught in his throat. His baby was surrounded by doctors and nurses with machines that flashed, whilst beeping loudly. It was like something you'd see on Grey's Anatomy, but they always cut to the add-break before anything good happened.

He chocked on his tears and stood there silently. He couldn't move. He could barely breathe. He just _watched_.

A few minutes later, he saw a female doctor wipe the sweat off her forehead and look his way. She sighed, nodding to the nurses and came out through a door slowly walking towards him. She took a deep breath and looked at the baby lying there in the pink blanket.

"Mr. Puckerman, I-"

"Noah. My name is Noah." He had no idea why he'd cut her off like that, but seeing the look on her face was almost as painful as hearing her say the words that were about to come next.

"Your baby... There were some complications. I'm so sorry, but..."

He zoned out after that. He did not want to hear anymore. He knew what she was going to say and he thought maybe if he didn't hear it, it wouldn't be true, but life was not that kind. Especially to Noah Puckerman. His baby was dead, wasn't it?

He nodded at nurse at the appropriate times and acted as if he was listening to her, but really all he could think was the one statement over and over again. _You're A Lima Loser. You're A Lima Loser. You're A Lima Loser._

It was like a broken record. It continuously plays until you find something to replace it with and that replacement? Thinking about telling Rachel Berry, that her daughter, the one she gave birth to at the tender age of 16 had just died of heart failure.

That was the moment he actually stopped breathing. Everything was just all becoming too much. The doctor in front of him was yelling at him calmly (Can anyone even do that?) telling him to relax and slow his breathing (Slow it down? He wasn't breathing at all!) Next thing he knew he was on the ground with the room spinning. He felt like that one time he went to Dave Karovsky's party and had his first line of Cocaine.

_He was sitting on the floor of Karovsky's lounge room with Santana Lopez lying across his lap. He was too drunk to be able to lift her off of him and move her elsewhere. Dave walked into the room with a bag full of white powder. From the moment he walked into the room, Puck knew that shit was about to go down._

_Finn was sitting behind Puck, on the couch. As soon as he saw the narcotics, he left the room. Of all the times Finn could have _not been_ pressured _by_ peer pressure, he decided _now_ that he was going to be the bigger man? Puck shook his head and gave a slight chuckle._

_Dave sat down on the floor across from Puck and jerked his head towards him._

_"Yo, Puckerman! You game?"_

_Puck watched as Dave pulled some of the powder from the clear baggie and lined it up on his coffee table. He'd never seen Karovsky so skilled in anything his entire life and for some reason he found that hilarious._

_Dave lined up some directly in front himself and snorted it up through his nose, straight off the glass table. He sat back and let the high hit him for a moment. He wiped his nose and went to line some up for Puck. Santana scowled at the both of them and got up off Puck's lap, stumbling out of the room in search for Finn._

_Puck moved forward and inhaled the line. He sat back like he'd seen Karovsky do and let the high overcome him. It was like nothing he had ever experienced before. Everything just felt so good now. It was like the buzzing that had been in his head the past few months had finally disappeared. He looked up and saw Rachel Berry in the lounge room doorway sloppily dancing with Santana. _

_Either he was completely gone already or Rachel Berry was drunk. So yes, he liked cocaine. He liked it a lot. He stood up (He had to stand still for a minute or so because the room was spinning like a bitch and he couldn't see straight.) and walked over to her. She saw him and gave him this sexy little smile and took his hand._

After that he couldn't remember a thing. (Well, Nothing until the next morning at least with a naked (!) Rachel Berry lying on top of him.) He knew from that moment on that nothing would be the same. It broke his heart having to wake her up. He never wanted anything like this to happen between them (Not while they were drunk anyway.)

He would always remember the pain in her face as she got out of Dave Karovsky's parent's bed and out of their bedroom. He laid there for a few minutes after she had left and tried to remember most of the night before and it wasn't much.

So that entire memory brought him back to now. He was still on the floor of the hospital and the doctor was still in front of him, still telling him to calm down. He watched her put a needle back into her white jacket pocket. He slowly felt more relaxed and increasingly grew tired. He could feel people pull him to his feet and put him on a gurney.

* * *

Puck slowly awoke, blinking his eyes against the bright lights. He looked to his side and saw that he was on a gurney against the hospital hallway with the nurse's station directly in front of him. The female doctor (He was going to have to find out her name.) walked over to him.

"Noah, I need you to breathe for me right now. I need you to stay calm. Rachel is asking for you, but I refuse to let her see you when you're like this. You need to tell her what happened today and you need to be there for her. Do you understand me? Because there is a 16 year old girl in there who is going to need you to be able to support her through this."

Puck nodded slowly and got up off the gurney with the doctors help. He walked down the hallway and into Rachel's room. She was curled up in a foetal position in the dark. To a stranger she would have look like she was sleeping, but he knew her better then that and he wasn't quite sure when he became the only one who did.

As he walked over to her, he stubbed his foot on the food tray table and cursed. Rachel turned over and gave him a faint smile, before grimacing and turning back down. Puck walked warily towards the double bed and lay down behind her.

"Rach-"

"Don't. Just don't. I do not want to hear it. The nurses thought I was asleep and were gossiping. I know what happened. So, please just don't."

He took a deep breath and exhaled, nodding against her back. Rachel let out a hearty sob and he allowed himself to let a few tears fall.

* * *

A few days after everything that happened, Rachel had been allowed to leave the hospital and go home. Home now being Puck's house, seeing as her dad's _still_ weren't talking to her. As he pulled his truck into the small drive way, Rachel let her head lift from the cool glass window to stare at what would be her home for the next few years, or at least until she got out of Lima, Ohio and onto Broadway (that was an inedibility!)

Puck came around to open her door and help her down. Once her feet hit the ground her knees gave out a bit and Puck rushed to catch her before she fell, but Rachel caught herself.

"I'm fine, Puck"

He would be lying if he said that didn't sting a little.

She grabbed her handbag from the floor of the truck and marched to his- _their_ front door, leaving him to grab the rest of her bags. He sighed, shutting the passenger side door and walking around to the back of the truck to get her bags.

By the time he got to the front door it was already open and Rachel had gone inside. He saw her bag lying by the coat rack and eyed it suspiciously. She was nowhere to be seen. He put the small suitcase that they'd taken to the hospital with them down by her handbag and went in search around the house for the petite brunette.

As he was walking out of the kitchen he heard a crash upstairs. He rushed into his room to find her sitting on his floor going through his metal toolbox that was filled with small cocaine baggies.

She was speechless. She kept opening and closing her mouth like a fish until finally she pushed it all away from herself and closed her eyes. If she doesn't see it, it doesn't exist, right?

"Can you just lie to me right now and say they're not yours. Just please do that for me. I can't handle anything else right now."

He nodded and did and she asked.

"They're Karovsky's. Left 'em here after Football practice one night"

With her eyes still closed she let a single tear fall.

"Thankyou."

She sighed and wiped away at her eyes. The dark circles around them hadn't disappeared for what seemed like eternity. Puck walked over to her and picked her up off of his floor. She snuggled into his side as he put her down gently onto their bed. After kissing her forehead and making sure that she was asleep after a few minutes, he began working on cleaning out all the contraband from his room the Puckerman way.

Meaning that he dumped everything back into the toolbox and hid it within his deadbeat dad's empty and broken bar fridge in the garage, locking it so that his mother didn't find it. Not that she'd come in here anyway since that's where his dad spent most of his time.

After that first time at Karovsky's there was more that one thing that he'd become addicted too. Rachel Berry being one and well, the other was quite obvious. He'd been able to keep that shit under wraps for a while now too.

He'd been buying off Dave for a little while now. Almost a month. Karovsky had yet to figure out that he was dealing it to others for almost double the price. He made some good money off it too. Around $500 a week. In fact, all the medical bills were almost paid off much too every one's surprise.

According to them, they just thought that because his baby girl had _died_ (God forbid anyone actually talked about it.) the government had given them a pay out. He wasn't about to correct them any time soon. It was too small of a town and people talk.

And yeah, sometimes he would test it when he though Karovsky had given him a shit batch. And if he had to test a whole bag full, then so be it! Who was he compared to science?

He walked back up to his room to see Rachel crying in her sleep. He rushed over to her and tried to nudge her awake.

"Rachel! Come one Rach. It's just a dream babe. You've gotta wake up!"

He shook her arm and brushed the hair back from her face. She slowly opened her eyes. She buried her face into his pillow and let out a sob.

"I can't do this. _It's so hard!_"

Puck let his face drop. It was so hard for him to watch her whilst she acted like this and he knew that there was only so much that could be done. He slowly and carefully climbed into the bed with her and just held her whilst she cried. Sure, he was upset, but he refused to think about it. He wouldn't let himself. He had to be there for Rachel.

His emotional baggage could wait till Rachel Berry was ok.

* * *

Rachel woke up during the night… the morning? She didn't even know what time it was. It wasn't important though. She looked around the bedroom and all she could see were baby gifts. When she had first come home from the hospital she hadn't noticed any of it, but now that she was coherent and mentally awake they were everywhere.

She stood up from the bed and walked over to the other side of the room where Noah's desk was. She picked up the small pink bunny with "It's a girl!' stitched over its stomach. She suddenly tuned angry and threw it across the room. She looked back at the desk and threw off everything that was coating its surface and dumped it all over the floor.

Puck awoke to the sound of glass breaking and tried to gain his bearings. His girlfriend was growling and stalking across the room, smashing anything baby related.

"Rachel! What are you doing?"

She turned to face him. She saw the look of uncertainty in his eyes and burst into tears.

"I need it all to be gone. It's here, mocking me. I can't stand it. Just please, get rid of it all"

Rachel threw her arms up in the air and walked out of their bedroom. Puck followed her downstairs and watched her walk out the back door. He walked into the kitchen to grab some garbage bags whilst watching her from the window. She had sat down on the hammock that was hanging from an old tree in his backyard. He watched as she wiped angrily at the tears that dared to fall from her eyes.

He grabbed the bags and slowly walked back up the stairs, holding onto the banister for support.

He cautiously moved into the room and started to throw things into the bags. By the time he was done, there were 3 full garbage bags of just baby items. He tied them all together and dragged them to the garage. He found it ironic that the only room that his dad ever really spent time in was the room storing his Cocaine and the baby items. Toxic much?

He walked outside to lie with his girlfriend to find the hammock empty. With a frown on his face he quickly jumped up the steps to the bedroom to find her asleep in their bed again like nothing had ever happened.

* * *

It was nearly the start of winter and Lima was full of storms. Nearly all of Ohio was, but this night looked like the worst. Puck's mother and younger sister had decided to come back home from his Aunt's and all they had done is ask if Rachel was ok, if Rachel wanted to talk to a therapist, if Rachel was hungry. She just wanted to be left alone.

Puck had tried to call them off, but his mother heard no bar of it, saying that Puck was talking 'nonsense.' She really wished they'd just go away. She lied and told them all she was tired and was going to bed. Of course Puck knew she was bullshitting as it was only 7:30pm.

So here she sat, on the bed she shared with Puck staring out the window, with tears falling down her face. She was so angry with herself; all she could do was cry it seemed like. She wanted to pull a Sue Sylvester and get her tear ducts removed. Was that even possible?

She pull her hair out of the harsh ponytail she'd put it in a few minutes ago. That's another thing she hated. She couldn't make up her mind about anything. She brushed away the few strands that fell in front of her eyes away.

Puck leaned against the doorframe of their room watching her sitting on their bed, wide awake. He cleared his throat and she looked over.

"Hi." She quietly whispered.

"Hi." He whispered back.

He moved slowly over to the bed and sat down. He pulled her across his lap and she curled herself into his body.

"Do you think she'd like storms like this?"

This caught him completely off guard. Of all the things he thought she might say, nothing mentioning their dead baby girl came to mind.

"Yeah, I do. Everything looks better when the sun goes down."

He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. They sat there for a few more minutes just watching the storm from the bed, until Rachel shifted to look at him.

"Kiss me."

He hesitated before doing as she asked, but just brushing his lips against hers.

"Do you ever just want to forget?"

He couldn't hide the look of shock that covered his face, but slowly nodded anyway.

"When my dad left, I felt like he thought I wasn't good enough and it made me want to die knowing that the person that I looked up to most in the world thought I wasn't badass enough or whatever."

She nodded and brushed her lips over his.

"Just make me forget. Just for tonight, Noah. Please?"

She raised her hands to his face and brushed her lips over his. This time he didn't hold back. It had been too long.

* * *

2 months later Puck woke up one morning feeling like today was going to be the day he'd stop. He'd stop selling Cocaine. He'd stop snorting said cocaine. He'd stop being such an ass all the damn time. So today, he was going to just _stop_.

Of course all of his wishful thinking would come to a screeching holt by the time he got downstairs to see Rachel, his girlfriend of almost 2 years, the mother of his dead first born child, pacing their living room.

He cautiously walked towards her. She still hadn't seen him. She was waring down their carpet and wringing her hands together. An uneasy feeling settled over him as he watched her. Nothing good at all could come of this.

He stepped in her way when she turned around and she jumped out of her skin when she saw him.

"Baby, you ok?"

What she was about to say would kill him a little inside (Not that there was much of him left anyway.)

"I'm pregnant again…"

His knees gave out from under him as Puck passed out, hitting his head on the glass coffee table below him.

Rachel screamed his name as he lay there in his living room unconscious, his head gushing blood. She tried to hold her hands against the wound whilst she dialled 911. She couldn't believe the operator understood what she was screaming at him. All she knew was that there was an ambulance in Puck's driveway parked behind his car ready to take them both to the hospital.

* * *

When he woke up, Puck felt extremely groggy. He could feel pressure on his hand and looked to see the small brunette lying on it.

"Rach, Rach." He wheezed out.

He tried to move his hand, but found it numb. This wasn't the worst position he'd ever been in. In fact it was almost kind of nice just lying there in bed, not talking. Not doing anything, _just being_ with Rachel. He missed moments like this. Not that they'd had many.

Rachel slowly lifted her head from his hand and looked around the room. It was only then that he realised that he was in the hospital. The pressure from his hand was replaced with the pressure in his chest as he began to slowly panic. He could faintly hear Rachel's voice telling him to calm down and breathe.

He hadn't been in a hospital since _that day_. Both of them hadn't.

He started at her, wide eyed as she held his face in both of her hands.

"It's alright. You fell and hit your head on the coffee table. Just breathe for me Noah. Just breathe."

He let out some shallow breaths and started to do as she said. Once she was sure he was fine, she took his hand back in hers and ran her fingers over his white knuckles.

"Please don't scare me like that again"

He barley heard her over the sound of his own breathing, but nodded anyway. He saw some unshed tears in her eyes; he pulled her hand towards the bed with him. She understood what he meant and carefully climbed onto it with him, never letting go of his hand. She put her head in the crook of arm and wrapped her arms around his chest.

"We'll get through this Rachel." He whispered into her hair.

She moved an arm from his chest to rest under her head and nodded.

"I know."

* * *

When they got home from the hospital, Rachel walked straight to the kitchen for the cleaning supplies and started to work away the blood from the carpet. He knew better than to say anything about the tears in her eyes.

He walked over to the couch and slowly sat down. He knew that he should be taking it easy, he had just cracked his head open, resulting in 12 stitches. His doctor (thankfully it wasn't the same one as _that day_.) told him that he shouldn't be walking around much and he had to miss a week of school to recover (and who was he to argue that? Sitting in bed, playing HALO all day sounded like a pretty sweet deal to him!)

Once the room stopped spinning, he walked to the garage to check that everything was still there. Rachel watched him leave the room. She knew what he was about to do, and yet she wasn't sure why she wasn't stopping him…

He moved all the bags of mulch and whatever else that had accumulated over the years in the garage and made his way to the broken bar fridge. He should probably know better than to take a hit (or 6) after having his head, literally, stitched back up, but it had been way to long and he wasn't sure if it was the morphine wearing off, or if he was going into withdrawal, but his hands were shaking like a mofo.

He opened the toolbox; looked inside it and counted out the baggies (He'd have to ring Karovsky later to get some more.) he chose one and lined it up with what looked like _almost_ years of practice.

Meanwhile Rachel sat on the lounge room floor, with the blood still incrusted into the carpet, staring at the garage door. She knew that as soon as he walked back in that she needed to talk to him about his _habits_.

Only the thing is, that night he never came back into the lounge room.

* * *

Puck awoke one morning to find Rachel's side of the bed empty. With his eyes still shut he ran his hands over the cool sheets. He slowly sat up and rubbed away the sleep that had crusted itself into his eyes. He looked at her pillow to find a folded, white piece of paper with his name on it.

"_Dear Noah,_

_It's too hard to live in that house. I just need some space. I'll be at my father's. Please don't call me._

_From Rachel."_

He read it once. Then read it again. Then scrunched it up and threw it into the bin beside his desk. This felt _almost_ as bad as _that day_ in the hospital. Since when was she talking to her fathers again and what was this 'from' shit? He thought they were defiantly at the 'love' stage.

If she wanted to leave, fine. If she wanted to take the cowards way out and not face their problems like a grown up, fine. See if he cares.

Puck rolled back over and closed his eyes, willing sleep to come to him.

When he woke back up later that night, he felt incredibly guilty. Of course she couldn't cope in his house. His family was a nightmare, even if they had stayed away for a while to let them grieve. The baby stuff was still everywhere no matter how long he cleaned for. There was always something he missed. Not to mention that first day back where she'd discovered his Cocaine after being in their room for no longer than 5 minutes.

They were all a mess. Not even a Cobra Starship-esque (Vicky T is hot alright?) hot mess.

Thinking about babies, then about Cocaine made him think to money. They still had to pay the last of his and the babies hospital bills (Not to mention that she was pregnant _again_ and they had to pay for everything that came with that, _again_.) He sighed and rubbed his forehead. He saw his phone on the bedside table and decided to make some calls to his "customers".

* * *

After he was done calling all his clients, he rang Dave to double check that he could get some off him. Soon everything was measured and put into there own separate baggies; he had nothing left to do.

He looked at the wallpaper on his phone. It was him and Rach from a year or so ago, before everything went to shit. They weren't even looking at the camera, just at each other and yeah, he was manly enough to know that the looks that they were sharing in the photo were love.

He scrolled down his contact list and found Rachel. His thumb hovered over the little green dial button for a second before pushing down on it.

He honestly didn't think she'd answer. It was 1:30am after all, but she did answer and he did thank whoever was out there watching over him (Chuck Norris may have been thrown in there somewhere as well.)

"What do you want Noah?" She didn't even sound like she'd been sleeping. He knew her well enough to know that she was probably watching the sky from her windowsill.

"I just… I just wanted to know if you were alright." It came out quietly, like he was unsure of what to say.

"I'm fine. What did you really want?"

He avoided that question. What _did_ he really want anyway?

"Do you need anything?"

He heard he sigh before answering.

"I'm fine. Goodbye Noah"

"Wait!" What the hell was he going to say now?

"Is the baby ok, Rach? I mean, I know that I'm screwing up and this isn't what you had planned for your life at all, but I'm trying and I want to be there for you. Like last time."

The moment that last part came out of his mouth he knew that he should have never have called.

"The baby will be fine once you're out of its life Puck! I told you not to call me. I'm stressed enough as it is without you coming into the picture and screwing everything up. I mean it's not like you'll remember that you've done anything wrong. Probably to high out of your mind to realise that this is real life and you are fucking it up for everyone."

She hung up then.

Yeah, Rachel Berry swore and it was fucking awesome. He refused to remember anything else she said. It hurt too much because she was right. They'd be so much better off without him. What stumped him was that she was under stress. He assumed she meant money…

He looked over at the broken bar fridge. Inside it was at least $1000 maybe more. He slipped into his little sister's room. She was sleeping, but on her desk were envelopes ready for when her pen pal wrote back to her.

He grabbed a few and went back to the garage. He sat down at the work bench he'd put in there a few weeks back and wrote Rachel's name on the front of one in his messy scrawl. He opened the fridge, pulled all the cash out and placed it carefully into the envelop.

He grabbed his keys, jumped into his truck and drove toward the Berry residence.

* * *

It wasn't fair. It really wasn't. Rachel had been thrown into this _situation_ far too early in her life. She'd fallen in love; gotten pregnant, suffered through 9 months of hell only to have her baby _die_ and now she was pregnant again. Someone was out there to get her, she was sure of it.

She stared at her phone, which was resting in her left hand and the envelop full of money that sat uncomfortably in her right. She knew what she had to do, even if she felt – no _knew_ - it was wrong, but she could not go through that pain and stress ever again!

She understood that she was being selfish, but for once in her life she'd allow herself this. Everyday she did things that were for others, but just this once she'd do something for herself. She needed her life back. She needed normality. She had missed out on so much school that she was sure that she was going to be held back.

She flipped open her phone to see the wallpaper. That one photo of herself and Noah at some restaurant. The one right before everything happened. She sighed and started dialling.

It was done. She had just booked herself an appointment at the family clinic. An appointment for an abortion.

* * *

Every week Puck would go to Rachel's house to drop off money. She wasn't an idiot. She understood where it was all coming from. Her dad's weren't idiots either. They threatened to ring the police on him a few times.

It got to a point were she had over $4,000 in cash compiling in a draw within her room. That was when she snapped.

She dialled the familiar number.

"Elloooo?" He gave a slight chuckle at the end and sniffled loudly.

She hung up.

She did not expect him to be high right at this very moment. He was only at her house not even 10 minutes ago dropping off more money, but she's still not sure why she's surprised.

She grabbed the money, a jacket and her keys and made her way outside to her car. She looked up at the sky. It wasn't storming that night. She rubbed her eyes and forced the memories of thunderous nights out of her head. She started her car and drove to Puck's house.

As she pulled into the drive, she could see that his mother wasn't home. She was glad. She did not want her there whilst she tore Puck a new one.

She sat for a while, just staring at his two story house. She held the money in her hands tightly. For once in her life she hadn't planned on what she was going to say or do when she saw him for the first time in however many weeks. Rachel took a deep breath, got out of her car and quickly made her way up the drive.

She still hadn't given back the keys that Noah had cut for her. They hung proudly from her keychain still, mocking her. _Stupid keys._

Once she was inside, she took off her jacket and hung it up on the rack. She still held the money tightly in her hands. She surveyed the lounge room from the doorway. It was still a mess. She couldn't recall a time when it was clean. Nobody really had the time for housework. Puck's mother was always at work, leaving Noah with his sister who was seriously like a little tornado. She left a mess no matter where she went and never picked up after herself.

As she searched for him around the house, it occurred to her that the only place she'd ever seen him go and not return for an entire night was the garage and _nobody_ went in there. That was Mr. Puckerman's room. She cautiously turned around from the staircase and opened the old wooden door in the lounge room that led into the car hold.

She found him slouched in his seat, staring at the roof, drooling out of the side of his mouth a little bit. She grimaced in disgust. Yeah Puckerman, you look _really_ badass now. She rolled her eyes at her own thought and moved closer to him.

Rachel wasn't sure of what came over her, but as she increasingly grew closer to him, the angrier she got. So by the time she was next to him, her knuckles were white and she was literally shaking with anger. She swore there was a growl that crossed her lips.

She raised her right hand and punched him square in the jaw. She watches him fall from his chair to the ground. She threw the money at him, towards the concrete floor, with her left. He finally snapped out of whatever fantasy world he was in and coughed violently, spitting blood below him. He moves his jaw side to side whilst holding it with one of his hands whilst he tried to pick up the packet of money.

He opened the envelop and looks up.

"Rachel? The fuck?"

Ok, she'll admit it. Punching him? It felt awesome! But her knuckles right now though? They hurt like a bitch. She came to his house with a purpose though. Her hand can wait till she was done.

"I need to talk to you about something. Are you done killing yourself now or should I come back later?"

She raises her eyebrow daring him to tell her to leave.

"Why the fuck did you just hit me? S' fuckin' hot, but my jaw hurts like a motherfucker now."

She lets out a breath. He'd thrown the money onto the work desk and was now clicking his jaw.

"I need you to stop giving me money. I don't need it anymore."

He looks at her curiously.

"Why wouldn't you need it anymore?"

She can't believe he's having such a hard time figuring out that she's not pregnant anymore. Like, seriously. She should be the size of a house right now.

"Seriously? You can't tell? I'm not pregnant, Puck."

She watches him visibly flinch. She's not sure at what though, the use of the name 'Puck' or the not pregnant part.

"Are you ok?"

She's confused now. Why wouldn't she be anymore ok than usual?

"Excuse me?"

"Well, you must have fallen or something right? That's how you can lose a baby, yeah?"

"I had an abortion, Puck."

She watched as he saw red.

"You got a fucking abortion? Are you shitting me right now? So that little conversation we had the first time you got pregnant, remember that one? The one where you said that you'd never, under any circumstances get an abortion - meant nothing?"

Screw her aching knuckles. She'd kill him.

"You don't get to be angry right now! I'm the one who has to go through this, not you. You don't get the giant belly and the midnight cravings. Quit acting like this is some horrible thing. I don't want to go through with it again. This is MY choice, not yours, not ours, not anything. MINE!"

He shakes his head lightly and gives out a bitter laugh.

"I can't even look at you right now. I can't believe you did this without consulting me first."

He moves to walk out of the room.

"Who is the one shitting who now, Puck? I kill a baby and you're acting like the world is ending. You're a drug dealer remember? Not that you could forget or anything because you're still high right now aren't you?"

His back is facing her, but she can still hear him growling.

"At least I don't walk away from my problems" He says quietly.

"What was that?" She's grinding her teeth together now. She knew what he said, but wanted to see if he had to balls to say it to her face.

He turns around to look at her.

"I said, At least I don't walk away from my problems. Well, in your case, sneak out during the fucking night."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I just had this thing happen to me, what was it? Oh, my daughter DIED, Puck. She died and excuse me for not being able to stay in this fucking house because everywhere I went had some stupid little memory about her."

He rolls his eyes.

"You need to stop acting like you were alone in all of this. It happened to me too. 'Your daughter' was also mine."

He walks out of the room with that and Rachel lets out a feral growl. He can just picture her stomping her foot and throwing her arms up in the air. She makes a move to follow after him, but something catches her eye.

She looks to his desk to see all the little baggies on display neatly. There is a lined notepad next to them. She walks closer to inspect everything. The notepad is just a list of names and numbers that looked like weight? There's also a little pink piece of clothe, but she doesn't take much notice of it.

She notices Mike Chang and Principle Figgins names on the list along with some drawings of them and laughs at the stupidity of it. Of course he was selling to Figgins. There is no way that Noah was still in school with his grades.

Finally she picks up the little pink blanket and notices the stitching embroidered into one of the corners.

_Little baby girl – Puckerman._

She feels tears begin to prick at her eyes and tries to remember how to breathe.

Meanwhile, Puck is in the kitchen downing glass after glass of water to calm him down. He hasn't heard the front door close yet, so he's sure that Rachel's still in his house somewhere. He doesn't remember when _their_ house became _his_ house.

He puts down his glass and walks back towards the garage. He can't hear her, but he knows that she's still in there. As he opens the door, his heart breaks a little bit. She's standing there holding the blanket that one of the elderly nurses had made for his- _their_ baby girl. She brought it up to her nose and the sobs finally rack her body. He can clearly see that her right hand is starting to swell from when she sucker punched him.

He can't say that she punches like a girl because his jaw feels like it's on fire right now.

He rushes over to her and she surprises him by actually letting him touch her, let alone hold her while she fell apart _again_.

"It's ok Rach. It's alright." He rubs her back whilst pressing his face into her hair. God he missed her.

"It's not ok though. All you've done is put all your feelings on a backburner for me and look how far that's gotten us! I'm so sorry. You're right. It's our baby, not just mine."

He's not sure which baby she's talking about, but he's just glad that she's letting him be there for her now. She wipes her eyes and slowly steps back from him.

"When I first saw the drugs, I asked you to lie to me and say they weren't yours. Right now, I need to hear you tell me the truth and that you're going to stop."

She had eyes closed and looked down whilst she talked.

"Rachel… Look at me please?"

She did what he asked and he took her face in his hands.

"The drugs- The Cocaine is mine."

She tried to look away, but he wouldn't let her.

"They're mine and once I sell it all, I'll stop."

She looked at him dead on.

"That's still not what I wanted to hear." She whispered to him.

Rachel threw the blanket back onto the desk and quickly left the room. Grabbing her jacket and keys she made her way back to her car and drove home. She didn't hear Puck tear apart the garage in anger as she was leaving. She refused too.

* * *

After Rachel had left, Puck picked up the money that had spilled all over the garage floor. $4000 could get him and his family to a lot of places. It could pay the bills and his sisters school fees. It would really help out his mother too, but then again it was Rachel's money.

He knew that her dad's were still stand offish with her. His mum had told him so after she got back from Temple one morning. They refused to look her in eye and only spoke to her when she spoke to them. He doubted that they would pay for her to go to New York now. She did get pregnant twice at the age of 16. They probably convinced her to get the abortion too.

_Yeah, her dads were the masterminds behind that little plan…_

He knew that he was lying to himself. He also knew that he needed to stop the drug abuse. He needed to get his life back together and grow up. He couldn't be the teenage screw–up with a Mohawk for much longer. It was getting old. His mum didn't even trust him to look after his 9 year old sister anymore.

He looked around the mess of a garage and sighed. He picked up all the tools that he'd thrown around and started to sweep up all the compost or whatever that dirty shit was that fell out of one of the bags.

He would start to get his life back together one thing at a time. Starting with his house.

* * *

Once Rachel was back home and safely locked in her bedroom, she let herself cry. Everything with Puck just went from bad to worse. She couldn't believe that she'd acted as barbaric as that towards him. She felt like one of those teenagers that you see in a YouTube video fighting with each other at a party or something.

She needed him to tell her that he would stop dealing right now, not once he'd sold everything. She wanted, no, _needed_ Noah back. Not this older, bitter and jaded version of him. She curled herself up into a ball on her bed and sobbed. She was too young for this. No matter how many times she said it, or screamed it nothing seemed to change. It just was not fair.

She could hear a car pull into her driveway a few hours later. She assumed it was her fathers coming home from work, until she heard her window break and a loud "FUCK!" come from outside.

She knew that voice. She sat up and went to go investigate. Puck was outside her window with his hands in his pockets, scuffing his sneakers against the pebbles that surround the side of her house. She raised the frame of the broken part of her window up.

Before she could even get a word out, he had already cut her off.

"I'm going to screw up." He stared straight into her eyes.

"I'm going to screw up. I'm going to make mistakes, but I need you there to help me pick myself back up again. You know that stupid Robbie Williams song that you used to sing all the damn time? That one about being a better man? You're it for me Rach."

She looked behind to see her neighbours being nosy and watching the scene play out in front of them. They'd even opened the window. Rachel let out a sigh.

"Noah, just come in and we can talk."

She went to move back inside her window, but his voice stopped her.

"No, you need to hear this right now and apparently your neighbours do as well"

He raised his voice at the last part and her neighbours huffed and shut the window and curtains. She gave a small smile.

"I flushed the Cocaine. I realised after you left, that me selling the rest of it, is not what you wanted to hear. It's not going to be easy, but I think that with your help, I can kick it."

Rachel rested her elbows on her windowsill and wiped her eyes. Every time she was near him she couldn't help, but cry. All the memories were pushed into one big heap and thrown to the front of her mind.

"I love you Rach."

She whipped her head to look at him. She'd never heard him say that to anyone. Not even his family.

"I love you and I need you to believe in me again."

She shook her head and laughed. She moved away from the window and ran downstairs to her front door. Puck ran towards it as well.

She ripped it open just as he got there and threw herself into his arms. He caught her and held onto her tight. Tears pricking at his eyes.

"There's a lot more we need to talk about, but I love you too."

She brushed her lips his roughly as he pushed their way into her house.

* * *

The next morning they are still in Rachel's bed, just lazily facing at each other. Puck is running his fingers down the middle of her back and she's kissing the crook between his neck and shoulder.

"Why did you really get the abortion?"

She looks up at him through her lashes and lets a breath.

"At first I did it because I felt that I needed to grow up, but really, I think I needed to grow down. I was pregnant for the second time at the age of 16 and had been thrown into a world I wasn't ready for. I needed to be a kid again."

He nodded in understanding.

"I miss her sometimes."

Rachel's face showed her confusion and Puck rolled over onto his back.

"I know that she was only a few days old and that I only held her once, but I miss her. We didn't even name her. We just kept calling her our baby girl…"

Rachel's head rested on her hand as she mulled over what he'd just said.

"How about you pick a name right now?"

"What?"

"Why not, right? I mean she needs a name and who better to give her one than her daddy?"

Puck knew this was hard for Rachel to talk about. It was like an unspoken agreement that anything baby related was not discussed, but she was pretty open about the abortion so why stop there?

A few minutes later, Noah came out of his thoughts.

"Samara. It means blessing and she kind of was a blessing in disguise. We wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for her. It was almost like we needed to go through all the adult crap to appreciate all the childish nonsense that we take for granted."

Rachel nodded in agreement.

"I like it."

* * *

So yeah, it's been 6 months since his baby girl died, but in a messed up sort of way, he's kind of glad that she's gone. Who would want to be raised by an ex-drug dealer/user like him?

He stands up from his seat.

"Hi, I'm Noah Puckerman and I used to deal Cocaine, my baby died at 2 days of old of heart failure and I've been clean for 2 weeks."

* * *

This is for GOLDSTAR_  
She asked for it a few weeks ago and has waited patiently for it. She's beautiful.  
I would just like to say thankyou to everyone who helped me with this:

sassy_26 Every time I was stuck for words she was always there to help me, whether she knew it or not.

tashah04 She helped me out with her knowledge of head injuries. Hopefully she doesn't have to learn anymore about it.

brookemoplitan Just for being hilarious.

Music was a big part of this for me. So thankyou to:

Fall Out Boy's "America's Suitehearts"  
The Pretty Reckless' "Make Me Wanna Die"  
Grayson Chance's "Paparazzi"

If there is anyone I missed know that you're loved and appreciated.


End file.
